Antoine Vielliard, the mayor of the French commune Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, which borders the canton of Geneva, is after those who live in France but pretend to live in Geneva. In a radio interview on Swiss broadcaster RTS, he explains how they estimate the level of fraud and how they are combatting it. Across neighbouring France an […]
Geneva plans to offer permits to thousands of illegal immigrants
Tribune de Genève. After more than 15 years, Geneva State councillor Pierre Maudet unveiled a plan code named operation Papyrus. The operation was negotiated with Switzerland’s federal government to regularise some of Geneva’s illegal immigrants, mainly domestic workers. Under the operation, 590 residence permits have already been granted. Pierre Maudet said “Papyrus is a roadmap for […]
Geneva has Switzerland’s worst traffic, ranking ahead of New York
The satellite navigation company TomTom, has collected over 14 trillion measurements from over 450 million GPS devices around the world, crunched the data, and worked out which cities have the worst traffic congestion. The latest ranking is based on 2016 data. Mexico city had the worst traffic congestion. The average time lost to traffic there […]
Should streets be closed to cars to let children play?
20 Minutes. Elected member of the Green Party, Alfonso Gomez, would like to see some of Geneva’s streets closed to cars on Wednesdays and Sundays to give children more space to run around. Gomez, cites a study by Pro Juventute, which calculates that an average city kid spent 3 to 4 hours running around outside […]
Geneva driver faces parking fine of more than 1,800 francs
Tribune de Genève. Last Thursday, the driver of a car parked near the intersection of place Bel-Air and rue de la Corraterie received a nasty surprise. The driver, who works in a nearby bank, left her car parked across tram tracks for 40 minutes, according to Tribune de Genève. This single mistake had a knock-on […]
Geneva’s iconic Jet d’eau gets a webcam
If you can’t make it out to see Geneva’s world famous 140m-high squirt of water in person, it can now be viewed around the clock, 365 days a year, via a new recently installed webcam. According to sightsmap.com, the Jet d’eau is Geneva’s second most photographed sight after the Place des Nations, home to the […]
What you call Lake Geneva really does matter, according to a poll
To non-French speakers the notion might seem odd. In English the big blue watery thing in Western Switzerland has only one name: Lake Geneva. And in German it is der Genfersee. Well in French it is not that simple. Lausanne’s student radio station Fréquence Banane, ran a poll on their Facebook page that was picked up by […]
Geneva close to a population of 500,000
Tribune de Genève. According to September data recently published by the canton’s statistics office Ocstat, Geneva had a population of 494,666 by the end of September 2016. Tribune de Genève said the symbolic bar of half a million will without a doubt be reached in the coming months, before qualifying its prediction saying it will […]
Geneva unveils big tax changes
Le Matin. After nearly ten years of European Union opposition to preferential company tax deals, Switzerland’s government agreed in 2014 to do away with such arrangements. Under current rules Swiss cantons can offer preferential tax rates to certain companies, mostly multinationals with most of their activity abroad. In Geneva, these special rates mean certain companies pay tax […]
A pilgrimage to Geneva’s cemetery of Kings, with artist and writer John Berger
British writer and artist John Berger – 90 years-old on 5 November, 2016 – has lived in the nearby French Haute-Savoie since the 1970s and has made a name celebrating the vanishing culture and life of European peasants. But as Peter Hulm points out, Berger is also a surpising fan of bourgeois Geneva, and of […]
